Mikiko Hara, Photography, or Consciousness of the Quotidian

How do we define an existence if not by an association of sequences, images, and emotions that we are confronted with, without clear links? The 25 photographs selected by Mikiko Hara in These are Days (2014) present moments, places, spaces, and vignettes of life, in which the leading figures are at the same time united and isolated.

Born in 1967 in Toyama Prefecture, Mikiko Hara trained at the Tokyo College of Photography and was awarded the prestigious Kimura Ihei Award in 2017, following in the footsteps of Takashi Arai and Lieko Shiga. The specificity of her work is that she uses an Ikonta camera without a viewfinder. ‘The camera eye is more honest, simple, coolheaded and unforgiving than my own eyes,’ says the artist in the pages of her book.

Implicating the spectator in her memories

The series These are Days compiles photographs taken between 2010 and 2014 and provides an insight into moments that are both unique and familiar. The shots stage children, passengers lost in their own thoughts on the metro, and beaches shot from above. The kind of images that appear and disappear in front of our eyes, devoid of symbolism. ‘I feel the camera excels as an apparatus that can grasp and slowly scoop up things we cannot understand or perceive,’ says the photographer. In an interview with the New York Times, she explains that she hopes her work provokes in her audience ‘ambivalent or unexplainable feelings, and resonates with their fragmented memories.’

The photo book is the second to be published by the artist, following Hysteric Thirteen (2005), in which she captures women in pensive reflection.

These are Days (2014), the photo book by Mikiko Hara, is published by Osiris.